Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson
Starring: Kal Penn, Jon Cho, Neil Patrick Harris, Tom Lennon, Amir Blumenfeld
Running Time: 86 minutes
Certificate: 18
Extras: Deleted Scenes
Those familiar with the shenanigans of Harold and Kumar will be either excited or in a fit of despair at their festive offering, A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS. For those not in the know, the Harold and Kumar movies consist of the following: weed smoking, sex jokes, and some mild racial humour. Previous outings have seen them visit White Castle eatery and Guantanamo Bay. Needless to say this isn’t highbrow movie making, but writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg know that and don’t aim for anything else.
The plot – of sorts – revolves around Harold’s (Cho) search for a Christmas tree to please his father-in-law, played by Danny Trejo. There is a convoluted back story that see’s Harold and Kumar (Penn) reunited following two years apart, but there is no necessity to go into this because only one thing matters, is it funny?
Well, no. Dispersed amongst an endless melee of jokes are some winners, but they are few and far between: scenarios involving a Neil Patrick Harris cameo hit the spot, and the Wafflebot is funnier than most of the characters, but this isn’t enough for the film’s 86-minute running time. There are attempts to inject some heart into proceedings but when the humour is so juvenile it doesn’t work, and feels needlessly tacked on. After all the demographic the film is aimed at probably won’t care about Kumar’s ex, or Harold’s possible infertility.
All this written, it is still hard to dislike to A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS because it does exactly what it aims to: puerile, insensitive humour by the bucketload, and you have to ask yourself – can you hate something so unashamedly proud?
Extras: Some deleted scenes that show nothing to warrant their inclusion. You don’t even get a trailer.
A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS is released on DVD, Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray 5th November
